Garcia (Gabo) is no more alive but he will never die
“One Hundred Years of Solitude”—- Yes Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author of this epic Gabriel Garcia Marquez has died in Mexico but he will live through his eternal work. Garcia was considered one of the greatest Spanish-language authors, best known for his masterpiece of magic realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” is the story of seven generations of the Buendía Family in the town of Macondo. A couple José Arcadio Buendía, and Úrsula Iguarán leaves Riohacha, Colombia for finding a better life and a new home. This novel can be considered as the best metaphysical epic of 20th century.
While camping on a riverbank, José Arcadio Buendía dreams of “Macondo”, a city of mirrors that reflected the world in and about it. Upon awakening, he decides to found Macondo at the river side. After days of wandering the jungle, José Arcadio Buendía finds Macondo that is a utopic island. He invents the world according to his perceptions. Macondo becomes a town where unusual and extraordinary events happens that involve the generations of the Buendía family, who are unable or unwilling to escape their periodic self-inflicted misfortunes. Ultimately, a hurricane destroys Macondo. At the end of the story, a Buendía man deciphers an encryption that generations of Buendía family men had failed to decode. The secret message informed the recipient of every fortune and misfortune lived by the Buendía Family generations.
The 1967 novel sold more than 30m copies and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Other classics from Marquez included “Autumn of the Patriarch”, “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”. He produced stories, essays and several short novels such as “Leaf Storm” and “No One Writes to the Colonel” in the 1950s and early 1960s. His memoirs title “Living to Tell the Tale.”
Known affectionately to friends and fans as “Gabo,” Marquez was “landmark” for Latin America
Gabo was born on March 6, 1927 and raised by his maternal grandparents the town of Aracataca close to Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
His last public appearance was on his 87th birthday when he came out from his Mexico City home to smile and wave at well-wishers.
Goba writings are “visual or graphic”. Reader feels he is part of the scene he is reading. His elder son is now one of the famous producers of Latin America.
Goba also served as executive director of the Film Institute in Havana and was the head of the Latin American Film Foundation, wrote many screenplays.